books.google.com - "In approaching this vast topic, Gates displays disarming modesty and enthusiasm; his tone is that of a letter from a perceptive friend who can't wait to share what he's learned." -The New Yorker 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million...https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Political_Economy_of_Media.html?id=HkgcAQAAIAAJ&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe Political Economy of Media

The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas

"In approaching this vast topic, Gates displays disarming modesty and enthusiasm; his tone is that of a letter from a perceptive friend who can't wait to share what he's learned." -The New Yorker

12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest—over ten and a half million—were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes our entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences.

Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. So Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their acknowledge—or deny—their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries—Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru—through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view.

In Brazil, he delves behind the façade of Carnaval to discover how this ‘rainbow nation’ is waking up to its legacy as the world’s largest slave economy.

In Cuba, he finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island is inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution in 1959.

In Haiti, he tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves’s hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire became a double-edged sword.

In Mexico and Peru, he explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people—far greater than the number brought to the United States—brought to these countries as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru.

Professor Gates’ journey becomes ours as we are introduced to the faces and voices of the descendants of the Africans who created these worlds. He shows both the similarities and distinctions between these cultures, and how the New World manifestations are rooted in, but distinct from, their African antecedents. “Black in Latin America” is the third instalment of Gates’s documentary trilogy on the Black Experience in Africa, the United States, and in Latin America. In America Behind the Color Line, Professor Gates examined the fortunes of the black population of modern-day America. In Wonders of the African World, he embarked upon a series of journeys to reveal the history of African culture. Now, he brings that quest full-circle in an effort to discover how Africa and Europe combined to create the vibrant cultures of Latin America, with a rich legacy of thoughtful, articulate subjects whose stories are astonishingly moving and irresistibly compelling.

From inside the book

I have yet to read this (although I can safely call myself a fan of McChesney, after reading Communication Revolution).That said, I think the snippet review provided by Google here actually pertains to another title: "Black in Latin America" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Here's a link to a review "The Political Economy of Media" on Goodreads.com. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2406525.The_Political_Economy_of_Media#If you have any interest in buying this book (if it's not available in your local library, or for whatever other reason) I would totally recommend it to you. McChesney is lauded by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Mark Crispin Miller.I can't fix this snippet problem.Thanks in advance, to whomever notices and fixes this error - and kindly, please take a moment to remove this comment for me, or at least alert me so that I may revise it.

About the author (2008)

Robert W. McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Political Economy of Media, Communication Revolution, The Problem of the Media, and Rich Media, Poor Democracy.